QUESTION: I'm a type B who has always been challenged by recurring bladder infections -since early childhood. Is there any herbs or food I can take to help minimize the almost non-stop use of antibiotics?

ANSWER: The bladder wall is open of the tissues most heavily deposited with ABO blood group antigens. As a matter of fact, it is known well accepted that the loss of blood group antigens from the bladder wall is almost always associated with malignancy

ABO blood groups and cancer have an interesting relationship; in tissues not normally though to contain much blood type antigen, such as the thyroid, malignancy often is hallmarked with the inappropriate elaboration of blood type antigen. In tissues that normally contain ABO antigens, malignancy is often preceded by the loss of blood group antigens.

Urinary tract infections have been associated with ABO blood group, especially with group B (1), although other studies have disputed this. (2) What is not disputed, however, is the link between recurrent bladder infections and an increased incidence of chronic inflammation, with ABH non-secretors (3,4,5,6) When ABO blood group is factored with secretor status, the association becomes much stronger: Group B non-secretors have a much higher rate of chronic urinary tract infection and scarring over other blood groups. (7)

What to do:

The most basic strategy is to 1)find out if you are a non-secretor, 2.) if you are, to use a product like Deflect to provide blood type polysaccharides to in effect mimic the effect of being a secretor.

Non-secretors are more prone to infection because their inability to secrete their ABO blood type antigen in a 'free form' in such tissues as mucus and saliva deprives them of a way to inhibit bacteria from attaching to their tissue membranes. Think of bacteria as a piece of scotch tape. Now imagine the bladder wall as a piece of paper. Then imagine the bladder wall of a secretor being dusted with talcum powder. The scotch tape cannot attach to the bladder wall (paper) because the receptors were flooded by free blood type antigen (talc). A non-secretor has only the paper (no talc; i.e. no free blood type antigen) so the scotch tape (bacteria) can attach very easily.

Non-secretors will want to use a product like Deflect since it provides the 'talc' that they genetically cannot manufacture themselves.